FAQs

You can purchase any of our ChIP kits and reagents on our website using a credit or debit card. Simply add your products to the basket and follow the instructions to complete you order. Alternatively, you can place an order via our purchase order system.

We are happy to accept Purchase Orders as a method of payment from all institutions who have a credit account with us. If you have not yet set up an account, please visit to the account set up page and complete the online form where you can also upload your Purchase Order.

We will contact you by e-mail when the account is set up and ready to be used. You can then add items to the basket and at checkout, select the Pay with Purchase Order option.

Please ensure that the code is inserted correctly. Note that if you have used the code before, it will have expired and cannot be reused. Get in touch with us if you are still experiencing problems and we’d be happy to help you out.

A:The use of ChIP validated antibodies is essential for the success of a ChIP assay. The antibody must recognise and bind to native protein that is bound to DNA. It is essential to include ChIP validated positive and negative antibody controls to ensure chromatin preparation and ChIP methodology are appropriate. Antibodies from other applications do not always work well in ChIP. The Chromatrap® premium kit is supplied with positive and negative control antibodies to ensure the efficiency of the IP step.

The antibody epitope may have been destroyed or masked during the cross-linking process or it may be hidden by other proteins in the chromatin complex. Reduce the cross-linking incubation time or find an antibody which has alternative epitope.There may be an incorrect addition of antibody to chromatin sample, carryout an antibody dilution series to determine the optimum ratio. Optimal results have been achieved with a 2:1 antibody: chromatin ratio for qPCR and 30 µg chromatin and 5 µg antibody for sequencing in the Chromatrap® spin columns.

The antibody may be of low affinity and may require a longer incubation time than that suggested in the protocol, increase the ChIP reaction to an overnight incubation at 4°C.

Chromatin may be over or under sheared. Optimal cross-linking of DNA with proteins ensures that the chromatin structure is preserved during the isolation and ChIP procedure. The optimal time for crosslinking will vary with cell line. Too little cross-linking will result in DNA and antigenic protein loss. Lower formaldehyde concentrations or shorter incubation times may improve shearing efficiency but in doing so may result in less efficient cross-linking, reducing the yield of precipitated chromatin. Longer incubation times can result in over cross-linking. Chromatin becomes over cross-linked when it is impossible to recover a substantial amount by reverse cross-linking. Over cross-linking results in elevated background and reduced antigen availability.

The Chromatrap library preparation kit can be used to make high quality NGS libraries with as little as 500pg ChIP DNA. For the greatest possible complexity a library it is recommended that you use as much DNA as possible in library synthesis (upto the 1ug maximum).

Chromatrap ChIP-seq kits and Premium qPCR kits come complete with a control antibody and primer set to ensure you have the best quality chromatin for ChIP. Control antibodies and primer sets for verification of your samples are also available from the Chromatrap range.

Chromatrap kits do not use any beads throughout the entire IP assay. It’s that simple. Instead of beads, we use a porous solid state filter that has Pro-A or Pro-G bound to its surface. The porous filter drives maximum molecular mixing and immunocapture of antibody-chromatin complexes within a simple spin column. To find out more how our technology works, take a look at our Technology section.

Choosing the right kit for your ChIP is incredibly important, as it affects both whether your tests work or not and the quality of the results produced. We created this handy Chromtrap ChIP kit guide to understand what you do so we can direct you to the right kit. Its interactive!

The kits differ in the type of columns, slurry volumes and elution buffers. The qPCR kit should only be used when using cell lines and if you're only performing qPCR.

The ChIP-seq have a 1ml slurry volume vs 40µl for the ChIP-qPCR. This means that the ChIP-seq kit much more flexible, allowing you to load larger amounts of chromatin if required (1-50µg vs 1-10µg for the qPCR kit). The ChIP-seq kit is therefore suited for the use of primary cells and difficult cell types.

Note: Both qPCR and sequencing can be performed with the ChIP-seq kit but only ChIP-qPCR can be performed with the qPCR kit. With ChIP-Seq, the samples need to be purified prior to any downstream processing which is not required for the ChIP-qPCR kit.

Sonication is a simple and effective method of chromatin shearing which provides randomly fragmented chromatin. Provided the temperature is controlled during the sonication process and emulsification is avoided good quality chromatin can be obtained from most cell types using this method. Enzymatic shearing is useful if a sonicator is not available and is less disruptive to the epitopes of the protein of interest recognized by the specific antibody. Enzymatic shearing is essential when carrying out native ChIP (chromatin which has not been cross linked) as sonication can disrupts the protein/DNA complexes. Certain cell types may be resistant to lysis resulting in poor enzymatic shearing efficiency in this instance try sonication.

Buy with a purchase order

We are happy to accept Purchase Orders as a method of payment from all institutions who have a credit account with us. If you have not yet set up an account, please visit to the account set up page and complete the online form where you can also upload your Purchase Order.

This will create a new account and enable us to grant you a credit limit, subject to status. Once your account is set up, our team will be able to process your order. If you are entitled to tax exemption in your territory, please also upload the documents confirming your status. In Europe this will be a valid VAT Exemption Certificate.

Depending on credit checks that we may carry out, this process may take a few days to complete. We will contact you by e-mail when the account is set up and ready to be used. You can then add items to the basket and at checkout, select the Pay with Purchase Order option.